All Is Lost
by take-everything-and-more
Summary: Paige and Emily may have been meant for each other, but things break, and when they do, they never fit back together like they were meant to. They will have to decide whether it's worth trying to reform the pieces, or whether handling the broken edges will just lead to more hurt. Multi-chapter.
1. Prologue

The night Maya's body was found, Paige was walking back from the masked dance, her mask swinging at her side. It was the last late night walk she would feel safe taking for some time. Her thoughts were filled with Emily in a blue dress; the warmth of Emily's shoulder under her hand, her smile, her eyes- Paige tossed the mask into the air and caught it with a grin. She had tried to keep her emotions realistically guarded, hitching the heavy word of _friend _to them to weigh down their exuberance, but she couldn't help the lightness of her steps, the tight feeling in her chest as if everything inside her was being yanked upward.

Paige slowed her walk and smiled up at the sky, every star just another stage light for a scene Paige felt she was finally learning the lines to. She willed her body to savor this moment; the exact smell of the air and the weight it left in her lungs with every inhale, the way her heels rebounded against the asphalt, the tingle that kept running up the back of her neck, and the way she kept finding the exact shade of blue in Emily's dress all around her. She wanted to have a precise catalogue she could flip through so her mind could run over it a thousand times; open to the remembered page, spine cracked in that position from the repetition of its use, and run her fingers down the lines of what she had felt, permanent as ink on paper. She hadn't felt this good in a long time, hadn't thought it was possible even. Eyes adjust to darkness, and hearts adjust to the steady chilling of hopes; the constant click of a dial being turned down on joy, on expectation, on love. Paige hadn't realized she'd been living in subzero temperatures until Emily let the sun in; sent shuddering cracks through the ice and left Paige blinking, shivering in a body that could finally _feel _again, cold as it was.

Thawing brought on movement and movement brought on terrible choices in making those moves. The look of betrayal and distrust, self-reproach and blame in Emily's eyes the last time Paige had let her body get away from her filled her with ache. After the fiasco of nearly kissing Emily on the street, of taking advantage of an uncharacteristically uncollected and upset Emily, Paige had embarked on a program of penance, as if somehow she could train her body into submission, the way she always had; exhausting every muscle and nerve until her mind could finally control it, tell it to take the shape she needed it to- the straight deacon's daughter with perfect times who worked hard and had leadership potential. She would demand these things of herself and her body would be drained enough to comply. It was a constant game of keeping just ahead of the strain in her body that kept it obedient while still keeping the system running; like flooring a car with the emergency break on. And it used to work- it was exhausting, and Paige could feel the gears grinding, smell the burning, knew that some things would be shredded and ruined- but it worked.

With everything but Emily.

Emily seemed to override the fail-safes; short circuit every routine Paige had in place to keep herself in check. The girl flipped switches in her and snarled wires and overheated her most sensitive parts until Paige almost remembered what it felt like to have blood in her veins instead of battery acid. Emily reminded her that she was flesh and animal and impulse and desire and it always ended up with Paige lunging to kiss the girl.

Paige was determined it would not happen again. Every time some leafy new hope started to grow in her chest she would use the serrating pain of the hurt look in Emily's eyes to saw it in half. Paige knew these things had roots though, knew that it was only a matter of time before it grew back again, and, unable to find the tool that could uproot her hope for Emily, steeled herself for the constant pain of slicing it apart again and again.

But leafy things, green things, need the sun to grow- will crumble even the most stubborn walls of will to get at it- and Paige remembered who the sun was to her. There was a dance, and a girl would be there, and Paige would go, and something that would have to be cut down inside her would reach up a little higher.

There would be pain later, but for now, there was just Paige and air and stars and the memory of a blue dress.

Paige noticed the lights first, the color so close but so unlike the one she had been remembering. The red and blue flashes were eerie without the sound of a siren, it's absence letting everyone know that the tragedy was already over and done, no amount of hurry or hustle would change it. Paige's senses were still keyed to the height of their awareness and Paige had the sick feeling that this would also be a part of her memory of tonight—whatever the flashing lights held for her becoming as indelible as blue and red ink. The emergency vehicles were parked on the corner of Rose Glen and Concordia. Emily's block. Paige's slowed gait turned to an instant sprint, dropping her mask, wrenching off and tossing aside her suit jacket so she could run, rescue, save, stop, as fast as possible.

If there had been space in her head for thought she would have begged, bargained, threatened for Emily's safety, but there wasn't space for it; everything crowded out of her body by movement and the memory of Emily in a blue dress, Emily smiling, the dance not asked for. She should have asked Emily for the dance.

* * *

She hadn't asked Emily to dance; their friendship too new, the physicality of their relationship still too awkward. And Paige didn't trust her traitor body in the slightest- not with the temptation of hips in her hands and fingers on her neck and a body pressed close. Paige knew her limits, and that was so far past them it was in another time zone.

Instead they'd sat together most of the evening, the safety of a table and a few feet between them. They'd kept the conversation light; mostly talking about the ball, about whether Aria and Ezra or Hanna and Caleb were more diabetes inducing sweet. There was very little actual content to their talk, but there was substance- a strand of deep affection for each other- constant as a heartbeat and as thick around as the fists Paige made from holding onto it so tightly- that ran through everything they spoke of. And Emily was gentle—handled Paige like she was a long lost piece of childhood treasure, found in that haphazard unlooked for way; still precious, but lacking the immediacy of the talisman it used to be- the magic remembered, but without place now. It should have felt like a stone in the center of Paige's gut that there was still so much chemistry between them, and perhaps it would eventually, but for now it made the sacrifice of just being Emily's friend easier to bear.

Every now and again Paige would catch Emily watching the dance floor and then her eyes would flick down to the phone resting on the table. Her eyes had a wistful sadness that made Paige's chest hurt. Paige would run her palm against her sternum, try to loosen the tightness of the temptation to have Emily in her arms, their bodies finally moving in sync, tried to remind herself that it wasn't Paige that Emily wanted to have ask her to dance

She hadn't asked Emily to dance, but then, Emily didn't dance with anyone else either.

* * *

Paige was about to hit the line of bystanders at a dead run, unthinking of what would happen once she slammed into the wall of bodies, when she heard Emily's screaming howl of Maya's name. It started her into a tripping stop that angled her into the solid body of an onlooker- everything in her body and her heart off balance- and ended with her slipping sideways and skidding to the ground on her knees and palms. Paige started to stand, a helping hand under her arm from whomever she had run into, when another wailing yell from Emily sent her stumbling back to her knees, shoving the assistance away.

If there had been space in her head for thought Paige would have thanked god that it was Maya, not Emily, and then taken it back in shame with every sobbing yell Emily let loose. But there wasn't space for it- not around the sound of Emily screaming herself apart, audibly breaking. If there had been space for thought Paige might have thanked god that she was on her knees, skin grinding into the pavement so that she could only _hear_ Emily shattering, rather than having to see it. Then she would have cursed herself and taken it back, because even if it was the end of Emily, she wished she could be holding onto her while the pieces she would never be able to hold onto flew apart in her hands. If there had been space she might have thought all these things, but the sound of Emily was so loud that there was only room for the knowledge that there was not time enough in the world to heal some wounds. Some hurts never scar over and some wrongs become the hinge that everything else turns wrong on. There were enough dead spaces in Paige- places where no kind thing could grow- to understand that.

Emily's screams turned into loud sobbing and there was finally space around the sound in Paige's head for one thought: she should have asked Emily to dance. She should have held Emily as tightly as she could before things shrieked apart. She should have asked Emily because she would never be able to ask her again. Emily's cries were a wordless keening now, but Paige could hear in them what there were no words for. Everything was lost.


	2. Chapter 1

"So, did you and Shana ever..." Emily began, hoping Paige would finish the thought for her, knowing she wouldn't.

Paige shifted against her uncomfortably, the sensation of bare skin against skin sending a hum of sparks down Emily's still shaky body. It had been good, it was always good, but-

"Did we ever what?"

Emily twisted a length of Paige's auburn hair around her fingers, tightening it until she could feel the heartbeat in her fingertips, still so out of sync with the quick thump of Paige's own against her chest. She could feel the shorter girl's breathing change as she shifted again on top of Emily, kept her head under Emily's chin, her eyes out of sight.

Emily sighed, trying to make it sound less like concerned annoyance and more like...anything else.

"Did you and Shana ever-"

Paige looked up at her, eyes brown-gold, expression irritation-pleading.

"Do you really want to do this now?"

Emily blushed. She was ashamed, and shame made her want to lash out, made her want to say of course she didn't want to have to do this_ now_- not when she was naked underneath her girlfriend, but then again, she'd prefer if she didn't have to do this at all, if Paige hadn't made this necessary. Emily knew this line of thought was irrational, which made her more ashamed, which made her angrier, which made the rough red rope of frustration and heartsickness wrap tighter and tighter around her body until all she could feel was her own pounding heartbeat, until she felt so completely apart from Paige, even when her heart was beating against Emily's chest.

What made Emily feel so powerless was the unanswerable nature of Paige's question. It was slow going trucks in both lanes of the moral highway- there was just no fucking way around it. Emily was aware that there were more appropriate times for this conversation, but they were only_ more_ appropriate, not appropriate by themselves. It was the kind of question that became too terrifying at any near-appropriate time- needed the recklessness of terrible timing and perhaps a little mean-spiritedness- otherwise it would get stuck in her throat on the way out; the exhale turning into the omission lie of_ I'm so happy_ or _that was perfec_t instead. Emily knew she'd asked the question at the wrong time, that it was a wrong question entirely, but Paige's refusal to extend any grace on the subject towards Emily hurt. So it was irrational, and inappropriate, and none-of-her-business, and wrong but,_ goddamnit_, answer it anyway, just give me this, what would it cost you?

Paige had gone back to curling her head under Emily's chin, but all sense of ease had left both of the girl's bodies. Emily was suddenly aware that her leg was falling asleep, that the angle of her arm was in that hopeless moment before it became uncomfortable, that Paige's hair on her still warm, still slightly sweaty neck, was too hot. Paige felt frozen on top of her, breathing too regular, muscles too stiff, as if she was holding herself up even though her weight was still on Emily. It was a discomfort no amount of moving about and readjusting would solve- their bodies needed to be apart.

"I'm going to grab a glass of water. Want anything?" Emily asked, already extricating herself from Paige, trying to ignore the swiftness that Paige moved away from her with, the relief she could feel in the shorter girl's limbs.

"Um," Paige cleared her throat, looked away, "yeah, water would be good."

Emily shrugged on a shirt, flipped disheveled hair out from under the collar, did the awkward jean shuffle that no one could make graceful. Paige fiddled with the edge of the sheets, wound a found strand of Emily's long black hair tight around her fingers, unwound it, wound it again. Emily knew the heartbeat in Paige's fingertips hadn't slowed down. This moment should not feel so interminable, Emily thought, reaching for the door knob gratefully.

Every step on the way down the stairs made her heart sink a little more, as if she were physically descending into the feeling of hopelessness she had begun to associate with these increasingly tense moments with Paige.

She knew this thing between them, this question and refusal to answer, this physical intimacy without emotional intimacy, was poison. But this one thing had taken on a life of it's own- come to symbolize everything that was going wrong between them. They couldn't speak to each other; the disarming honesty of their confessions of hurt and sadness to each other had dried up like water evaporating before migration season- it was time to find sources of sustenance, of life, of trust, elsewhere. Emily wished she could take the irritation blanketing her insides, fold it up and around and over itself again, and again, until it became small and avoidable. Its density would send it sinking down into her, down to someplace she couldn't reach, could forget she knew about, where it could sit and fossilize and some emotional expedition many years later could uncover it and wonder what purpose this strange artifact could have possibly served.

Emily walked into Paige's kitchen, preoccupation keeping her from the usual routine of checking around every door before entering a room. Her caution would have been unnecessary- Paige's parents were in Scranton for the weekend and although they would have been profoundly uncomfortable with Emily and Paige being alone in the house together, the McCuller's seemed to have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind policy with their daughter- so long as they received a good report, a perfect report, by the end of the day.

Emily had to try a few cupboards before she found the glasses; Paige's house, and, Emily thought with a frown, Paige herself, still held some unfamiliarity for her. The water was ice-cold and it chased away whatever residual warmth had been left from Paige's body on her skin. Emily shivered, took another long drink.

Emily's phone dinged and buzzed in her back pocket, nearly making Emily choke on her water- she'd forgotten it was in the jeans she'd pulled on. Dread started to creep through her, following the same icy lines through her body the too-cold water had. Emily flipped her phone open, clicked the message icon from an unknown number. The message was blank, but there was an attachment- a photo attachment. Emily looked out the kitchen window in alarm, spun around the island in the center of the kitchen to an angle she couldn't be seen from, heart beating as fast as it did during any race. She opened the attachment.

It was a picture of a smiling Emily Fields with her arm around Missy Franklin's shoulder, the Olympic swimmer having pulled Emily into a similarly exuberant side hold. Emily's phone buzzed again and she opened the message.

_Thought you'd like a copy of this. You're lucky- my picture with Missy looks manic, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how smooth you are with the ladies. XO - Shana_

Emily hit the reply button, thumbs hovering over the tiny keyboard, a thousand different tones she could take and all of them so imprecise over text. She clicked cancel.

Grabbing the glasses, Emily headed back towards the stairs, towards Paige. She made it halfway up before she had to sit down, the desperation to avoid what was waiting upstairs making the climb heavy, the air harder to breath. Emily tapped her glass and fiddled with her phone.

She opened the text, read it twice, typed thanks, erased it.

When A had started to harass the girls Emily had gone through a several months long binge where she devoured stories about serial killers and stalkers and murderers and arsonists and psychopaths. She had hoped it would inoculate her against fear, bravado inducing as a horror movie marathon; that daily doses of how terribly it could all go wrong would make whatever did happen with A seem harmless. It hadn't of course- second-hand fear is never the same texture or flavor as the real thing; as different from each other as watered down lighter fluid and napalm. What had proved instructive to Emily was tracing the flow and fall of these stories- the journalist's inevitable slog to find the beginning of things, the powder left from the match that had started the fire. In peeling back the layers of these people- these impulses of violence wearing the shapes of people- there was always some origin found; some pet tortured, a classmate harassed, an uncomfortable interaction with a neighbor. Whether these villain origin stories were true or manufactured- and Emily's opinion leaned more towards the latter- they were fascinating nonetheless. If it was true, if life did work like that, Emily wondered, did they know when it happened, these people and their formative moments? Did they realize, during the instant of it happening, what path they had set on? Was something sent back for them, some reverse echo from the future that let them know of the burning to come?

Emily saved Shana's number and swore she could smell smoke


	3. Chapter 2

_- Before -_

Paige dove into the pool, lazily extended her slide through the water, relishing the feeling of it against her before she moved into her strokes.

She'd made her way to the school pool after her usual Sunday morning run, eager for the relative coolness of the natatorium after the muggy heat of the summer morning. The relief of cool water on hot and sticky skin was the closest thing she'd ever have to a religious experience, despite her father dragging her to church every Sunday afternoon. A deacon's daughter was expected to be sitting in the pew next to her parents every week, secret sexuality notwithstanding. Paige felt she would be putting her parents through enough as it was when they finally discovered her true nature, she could at least give them this as a sort of early payment on what she'd owe them. She'd have to make the most of the next hour in the pool though- the sermon set this month was on "sexual purity." Paige could almost feel her parents stiffen beside her at the mention of the topic. She grimaced at the thought, so preoccupied with dread she forgot herself and inadvertently inhaled water. She surfaced spluttering, yanking at her goggles, and grabbing for the pool's edge. She made contact with something decidedly softer.

"You're not supposed to drink it- you should leave some for the rest of us."

"Fuck. sorry." Paige managed to choke out, feeling her ears go hot as she snatched her hand away, brushed the water out of her eyes, rubbed at the indentations left from her goggles- knowing from experience they made her look like a rain-drowned raccoon. Rosewood High's pool was open to the public during the summer months, but Paige had never met anyone else at the pool this early, and no one had been in the locker room when she arrived, but she had been fairly single minded in her approach to the pool; it was conceivable that she simply hadn't registered this girl's presence.

The girl in question gave a sideways smile; the kind of smile that the desperate practice in a mirror, but comes naturally and perfectly to only a few. She brushed a wet strand of dark hair behind her ear, water glistening down her long neck; somehow making hanging onto the edge of a pool and treading water look poised and cocky. Her eyes, a darker and more intense brown than Paige's own, appraised her. Paige never did well with appraisals, tended to tank first impressions, and she steeled herself against the scrutiny.

"You were making pretty good time until you decided to drown." Paige's new acquaintance said.

"Yeah," Paige replied, thumping her chest and clearing her throat, "I do that."

"Well, you should be careful. The sign says there aren't any lifeguards on duty. Although I suppose I could be persuaded to give you CPR." the other girl's eyes flicked down the length of  
Paige and then back up as she spoke.

Paige froze momentarily and then laughed, a little hysterically, and nearly choked again; less from any residual water in her lungs and more from surprise. The other girl smiled in her absurdly perfect way again, not even trying to pretend that Paige's behaviour had something to do with anything other than her. Paige hadn't expected an audience at the pool today and wasn't prepared for it. She felt vulnerable and exposed by the water rather than held up by it.

"I'm Shana. You're Paige, right?"

"Yeah," Paige supplied, eyebrows drawn together as she tried to remember where she must have met this girl.

Shana shook her head, and waved away Paige's attempts at placing her, "You don't know me. I just try to keep track of all the anchor's in this district."

Paige tried to look as though Shana's answer had managed to clear up any of her confusion, tried a different tack, "I haven't seen you at the pool before. Are you visiting?"

"Sort of. Your coach was kind enough to let us use the space, or maybe she just wanted to get a look at the competition." Paige gave her a questioning look and Shana continued, "I go to Oakwood. Our pool is having a drainage issue, and we don't have a public pool, so-"

"Slumming it here in Rosewood?" Paige finished for her, pieces finally clicking into place. Shana swam for one of the Rosewood Shark's stiffest competitors. Oakwood had incredible facilities, and it made away-meets at the rival school especially difficult to handle when competitive energy was tinged with pool lust. It also didn't help that Oakwood had some of the most dedicated, or demented, swimfans in the district. It was a guarantee that at every meet with Oakwood Nick McCullers would have something to say about how "sacrilegious" their mascot was.

"Real devils don't come with tails and pitchforks. Real devils are as dangerous as they are beautiful, and it's exactly that kind of childish attitude about the Enemy that makes him so insidious." he would proclaim as he looked around the bleachers, and Paige's mother would attempt to shush him.

Shana laughed, "I guess. Oakwood is nice to look at, but it's the people in the pool who count. Rosewood seems to have a few people worth looking at."

It was compliment and flirtation and something else Paige couldn't place, as if the other girl's words were part of a larger narrative she wasn't in on. Paige had the uneasy feeling as she listened to Shana's voice that there were layers she couldn't now, or ever, comprehend; like the bottom of a pool just out of reach from her fingertips.

"Uh, yeah, sure. We have a good team this year. Really good."

"Really good, huh?" the other swimmer narrowed her eyes and gave Paige a look she recognized from swim-meet videos of herself- raw competitiveness. It looked good on Shana, informed every ready line of her body, charged the water around her.

"Show me."

Paige grinned, relieved to be sure-footed in the world of posturing and drilled in the language of athletic arrogance, "You sure you want your confidence crushed pre-season?"

The first of their four laps was almost painfully slow, both swimmers trying to gauge the other's true pace and waiting for the sudden sprint. As Paige headed into the flip-turn her usual competitive impatience kicked in as she jetted off the wall. She could sense more than see Shana fumble her flip-turn a bit, surprised by the sudden change in pace, her body overcompensating before her form caught up. Paige pressed her advantage, putting all her ferocity behind her strokes, hoping to intimidate her opponent with an immediate distance that would be difficult to make up. For a full length and a turn the strategy seemed to work, Shana lagging behind, almost out of Paige's sightlines when she checked her sides. Paige had never suffered from the impulse to ease off the throttle when she was ahead, the laziness and mercy of such a thing trained out of her by her father's sideline coaching, and she strained to increase her lead. Paige knew she was overly competitive, and she also knew she was taking a "friendly" race far beyond that natural competitiveness, but she needed this win; an unambiguous victory in the middle of a summer that felt defined by compromise and failure. Yesterday was the third aborted attempt at telling her parents she was gay; the third time she had psyched herself up to get it over with and some petty bullshit and her own cowardice had gotten in the way. It hurt to continually wind herself up so tightly only to have the tension yanked straight again with no relief. As the swimmers entered their third length and Paige's body began showing its initial stages of fatigue, as her muscles felt a familiar high pitched hum that Paige knew she could endure long after it became a tension wire screech, Shana's swimming changed.

Every wasted movement in her stroke was shaved off, peeled away from her as if she were kicking off a set of baggy clothing, or a cocoon, as she darted forward sharply to close the distance between herself and Paige. Paige kept up her pace as she watched Shana pull up on her from the corner of her eye. Surprise gave way to a fierce and joyfully competitive feeling- Paige liked a hard-won fight, liked how it reassured her of her own strength. Shana continued to make up the space between them, pulling up to her shoulder, Paige's muscles grating against the kind of exertion she was putting them through without a proper warm-up.

Shana's next turn was perfect- tight and powerful and Paige felt a twinge of uncertainty. It travelled from the base of her spine and down her side, lodging just below her ribs, a sharp jangle of pain that made her want to curl up in the water and sink to the bottom of the pool. Paige had never experience a cramp during a race before, but she usually had the presence of mind to warm herself up before any kind of serious swimming. Paige lunged into her next stroke, the muscles in her side that had drawn in on themselves stretching and sending sharp spider-webbing pain through her abdomen. Her kick faltered, and Shana pulled up another two inches. Paige held herself stiffly as she went into the final turn, the relief of folding in on herself giving way to another shooting pain as she opened up into the forward lunge. Paige hadn't been able to see it, but Shana's turn seemed to be on form, and her resulting kick-off brought her just ahead of Paige's strokes. Paige gritted her teeth. She could still do this, she could still win. The wall was so close.

And then Shana was gone, the blurred form at Paige's side falling back so quickly she thought something must have grabbed Shana's legs and yanked her backwards. Paige's momentum kept her going straight into the wall, hand thrown out nearly too late in her confusion as she jammed her fingers against the tile. Paige popped out of the water and swivelled around, watched as Shana tread water a meter back, smiling at Paige. Shana dove back underwater and coasted into her final touch before she surfaced next to Paige, pulling her dark hair to one side as she twisted water out of it.

"Nice race. You have some tight turns." Shana said, breathing easy.

"Yeah, your first wasn't so great."

Shana looked momentarily surprised, and Paige wasn't sure where this snappish irritation came from. It was a stupid joke; Shana's sudden withdrawal changing Paige's uncertain victory into a certain draw. It was a way of turning Paige's competitive feelings into embarrassment, her confidence into self-consciousness, of making Paige care about something only to make her realize that she was foolish for ever wanting it. Paige examined this bright spot of anger lodged in her chest, handling it as carefully as a knife, trying to understand where the sharpness of the edge was coming from. It was too perfect and fully formed to have sprung from the moment- the lines of it looked old and the surface polished to a dangerous shimmer.

Shana arched an eyebrow at the angry girl, looking delighted by Paige's attack as she laughed, "Paige, you're the competition- did you really think I'd show you all I've got before a meet? I'm sure you were holding something back."

Shana nodded towards her, both girls aware of how hard Paige was breathing, how her fingers curled around the edge of the pool were white-knuckled to stop them from shaking, how her body was still slightly twisted around the stitch in her side. Maybe it was the way Shana looked at her, like she already knew everything about her after a single race, like the real race had taken place somewhere inside her head and Paige was losing miserably over and over again. Shana was playing with her. Paige felt like she had crashed through a locked room in herself only to find it filled with gunpowder, and there was Shana holding a torch. Shana was playing like Alison.

Paige glared, "I swim to win. Every time."

Shana met her eyes with a steady look that made it clear that Paige's anger, and Paige herself, was something that slid off the darker girl as easily as the water did, "So do I. Winning looks a little different to me."

The anger felt familiar, even as it spiralled out of her control- the very powerlessness it provoked reminding her of what it felt like to be this angry every day with no recourse. There had never seemed to be enough of her to hold it, like buckets overflowing in a leaky house, promising rot, mold, and mildew. Since Ali disappeared there had been more sunny days for Paige, but the leaks themselves had never been patched; the structure as prone to damage as it had ever been. A season without school, without her team, and without Emily in the same country, had left her with too much time to examine the imperfections of her interior world and the angry girl that used to inhabit it. Sometimes she felt in danger of reverting to that girl, or perhaps more accurately as though she might be possessed- a creature more terrifying for its intimate familiarity with her rather than for its mystery. Paige moved to pull herself out of the water- extricate herself from the situation before the ghost of her past self fully took over- only to twist in on herself, hissing with pain as she held her side, "Shit, shit, shit."

Shana was immediately at her side, holding her up, arms wrapped around Paige's middle, "Did you pull something?"

"Just a stitch. It's fine." Shana was warmth where Paige had expected grave coldness, the heat and immediacy of the other girl's touch reminding her that empty grave or not, Ali was gone and possessed no reincarnated form. And her touch woke a craving in Paige. Paige had not been touched all summer. Animals grow up broken if nothing holds them, and people lose their humanity when no one touches them, and the human-beast that was Paige suffered,

Paige pulled away from her, an awkward disentanglement that brought her body into even more contact with Shana's. Even in the water, Paige could feel that Shana's skin was soft, has the nearly irresistible urge to just be still- to reduce all her senses to just the experience of that softness.

"Hey," Shana caught her arm, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Paige still couldn't read her, still couldn't peel back all the layers Shana seemed to wrap her words in, but she could tell that something about the statement was genuine, and this soothed her. Alison had not possessed a single genuine attribute- Paige often thought the blonde was some terrible amalgamation of mean girl movie villains, trickster gods, and the own dark thoughts of every citizen in Rosewood. Shana-whatever she was, however she'd intended the race to go- was not Alison.

"It's fine. Really." Paige said, and meant it.

She reached for the watch she'd left at the pool's edge, clicking the timer off and sending it back to it's usual display. Paige immediately began to scramble out of the pool, stitch painfully ignored.

"Shit! I'm late- I'm supposed to be at church!"

Shana laughed, leaned back into the water, "Seriously?"

Paige helplessly attempted to hop into her warm-up pants without slipping on the tile, "Yes!"

Shana gave Paige a considering look- the lazy calculation of one weighing the purchase of something they didn't really need, but could afford many times over; a look designed to make anyone watching realize how unnecessary any serious deliberation was- before she sighed and pulled herself out of the pool. Even in Paige's haste something in her tensed at the way water slid off Shana's dark skin before she pulled on her Oakwood reds.

"Tell you what," Shana said, zipping up her jacket, "I'll give you a ride," the darker girl picked up her gym bag and slung it over her shoulder, "and you give me your number."

Paige froze, half in her pants and dripping.

"What do you say, Paige- make a deal with the devil?"


End file.
